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Sykes and Vermeulen Strike Positive Superpole Blows

Kawasaki Racing Team riders Tom Sykes and Chris Vermeulen will start of the third and fourth row respectively for Sunday's 22-lap World Superbike Championship races in Australia.

After finishing 12th and 15th fastest in the first qualifying session on Friday, today's second qualifying saw Vermeulen seventh fastest, and Sykes 13th.

Combined qualifying times placed Chris eighth and Tom 15th, each easily inside Superpole qualification. It was an astoundingly close combined qualifying timesheet, however, as Chris's pre-Superpole performance saw him only 0.345 seconds from the quickest of all, and Tom only 0.651 away from top ranking.

Both Tom and Chris made it through two periods of Superpole, only missing out on the final part. After Superpole was completed Tom was placed 12th on the grid; Chris one row behind after ending up 14th quickest.

Tom Sykes: "The bike has felt consistent doing those 1'32s in qualifying and Superpole, which is nice. We changed a couple of things and certainly we could have squeezed a little more out of the package on the softer tires. We are starting on the third row of the grid, which I think compared to where things were at last year, we are certainly working in a good direction. We have some thinking to do tonight because we got a lot of new information today. That is certainly going to give us a better indication of which direction to go in tomorrow, depending on the weather conditions."

Chris Vermeulen: "We have come forward a long way, and today was the first time I had ever had the chance to use a qualifier. We ran one in the first of the Superpole sessions and it worked reasonably well.

We went out again and made a couple of mistakes on the other qualifier, then used a soft race tire after that. My early split times were improved, but we had a small problem with the bike and we couldn't complete that quick lap. Top seven or eight is possible tomorrow, but I do not know who is doing what with their tires, and there will be a lot of guys in there. We still have to decide on a final tire choice, it just depends on the weather."